Author Topic: Shutterstock Reports Q3 2014 Results (Read 33072 times)

gostwyck · « **on:** November 06, 2014, 17:05 »

- Third quarter revenue increased 41% from prior year to $83.7 million
- Adjusted EBITDA increased 36% to $17.3 million
- Quarterly paid downloads increased 23% to 31.2 million
- Revenue per download increased 13% to $2.65
- Image collection grew 44%; currently exceeds 44 million images and 2.1 million video clips

Read more about it here;

http://seekingalpha.com/pr/11606925-shutterstock-reports-third-quarter-2014-financial-results?app=n

tickstock · « **Reply #1 on:** November 06, 2014, 19:31 »

Looks like they had a good quarter. I wonder why they are down nearly 10% after the announcement. Might be a good time to buy?

gostwyck · « **Reply #2 on:** November 06, 2014, 19:37 »

Quote from: tickstock on November 06, 2014, 19:31

Looks like they had a good quarter. I wonder why they are down nearly 10% after the announcement. Might be a good time to buy?

Good results were anticipated. A classic case of "buy on the rumour, sell on the news". Always seems to happen when a business announces good news.

Rinderart · « **Reply #3 on:** November 06, 2014, 20:30 »

Closed at 74.91 today.

tickstock · « **Reply #4 on:** November 06, 2014, 20:32 »

Quote from: Rinderart on November 06, 2014, 20:30

Closed at 74.91 today.

Yeah but it looks like it went down below 65 in after hours trading. The earnings report came after the close.

Hobostocker · « **Reply #5 on:** November 06, 2014, 23:42 »

Quote from: gostwyck on November 06, 2014, 17:05

- Image collection grew 44%; currently exceeds 44 million images and 2.1 million video clips

this is huge, how long they can sustain such a growth ? soon they will have 2-300 million pics on sale, how are we supposed to stand out or even to make steady sales there ? however, i'm sure most of the growth is in the top selling niches.

jatrax · « **Reply #6 on:** November 07, 2014, 00:40 »

Quote from: Hobostocker on November 06, 2014, 23:42

Quote from: gostwyck on November 06, 2014, 17:05
- Image collection grew 44%; currently exceeds 44 million images and 2.1 million video clips

this is huge, how long they can sustain such a growth ? soon they will have 2-300 million pics on sale, how are we supposed to stand out or even to make steady sales there ? however, i'm sure most of the growth is in the top selling niches.

Mind boggling. Every time I sell an image I think "someone picked that out of 40 million options". How on earth did they find mine???

zstoimenov · « **Reply #7 on:** November 07, 2014, 00:48 »

I can bet that in 2/3 of the times they used the 'New files' filter. It will not get any better, especially for people like me who missed the last six to ten years.

Hobostocker · « **Reply #8 on:** November 07, 2014, 02:05 »

Quote from: zstoimenov on November 07, 2014, 00:48

I can bet that in 2/3 of the times they used the 'New files' filter. It will not get any better, especially for people like me who missed the last six to ten years.

sure but ultimately this factor alone WILL kill the microstock model because they won't be able to keep the promise of selling cheap but selling many times, you'll barely sell only once and for half a dollar, thus making it impossible to sustain the production costs.

i'm the first saying in stock you need a big portfolio but once the leading agency is doubling or tripling the size of its whole archive every year you just can't stay afloat, sooner or later your portfolio will be irrilevant, a drop in the ocean.

zstoimenov · « **Reply #9 on:** November 07, 2014, 02:08 »

Unfortunately, I think you are right. The only winner in this case is the agency. I guess the bank always wins

leaf · « **Reply #10 on:** November 07, 2014, 02:35 »

Quote from: Hobostocker on November 06, 2014, 23:42

Quote from: gostwyck on November 06, 2014, 17:05
- Image collection grew 44%; currently exceeds 44 million images and 2.1 million video clips

this is huge, how long they can sustain such a growth ? soon they will have 2-300 million pics on sale, how are we supposed to stand out or even to make steady sales there ? however, i'm sure most of the growth is in the top selling niches.

I think results in the future (for photographers) will be more and more on search placement (if it isn't already) and how good the search algorithm is on the site. How many website are there on the web - yet people are still able to find what they are generally looking for

BaldricksTrousers · « **Reply #11 on:** November 07, 2014, 02:46 »

Quote from: Hobostocker on November 06, 2014, 23:42

Quote from: gostwyck on November 06, 2014, 17:05
- Image collection grew 44%; currently exceeds 44 million images and 2.1 million video clips

this is huge, how long they can sustain such a growth ? soon they will have 2-300 million pics on sale, how are we supposed to stand out or even to make steady sales there ? however, i'm sure most of the growth is in the top selling niches.

They don't need to sustain the growth in the collection. If they stopped accepting images today they could probably still keep growing the business for years.

Lightrecorder · « **Reply #12 on:** November 07, 2014, 03:30 »

Its a matter of CYA for them. The more contributors and images they have, the more secure their business is, if people decide to pull out. They can slash royalties tomorrow, lose half the contributor base and still have 20 million images. Agencies are in power, we are just minions.

Hobostocker · « **Reply #13 on:** November 07, 2014, 05:48 »

Quote from: Lightrecorder on November 07, 2014, 03:30

Its a matter of CYA for them. The more contributors and images they have, the more secure their business is, if people decide to pull out. They can slash royalties tomorrow, lose half the contributor base and still have 20 million images. Agencies are in power, we are just minions.

of course but time will tell if this is a winning strategy, look how many agencies closed down in the last 5-10 yrs, many of them were former market leaders with highly paid execs all thinking they know the score, and yet ...

sdeva · « **Reply #14 on:** November 07, 2014, 05:49 »

Its great to see a stock agency doing well in the marketplace. It shows positivity when many other agencies seem to be struggling, creating an overall negative environment.

Having said that, its unfortunate that SS have not come out with any increase in basic commission structure to contributors in a number of years. The producers of the content also have costs and also live in an inflationary world. An agency when doing well, could remember that contributors are the backbone of this industry and owners of the content. Should we not be a part of the success?

Hobostocker · « **Reply #15 on:** November 07, 2014, 05:53 »

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on November 07, 2014, 02:46

They don't need to sustain the growth in the collection. If they stopped accepting images today they could probably still keep growing the business for years.

sure, screwing their own suppliers which are also buyers in many cases, just like iStock did ... what could ever go wrong ?

besides, agencies are not a search engine, they're not google, they don't need to keep in store billions of images that never sold and never will, they can pretty much set a limit like 50 million pics on sale and periodically delete the non-sellers, if your image never sold once in 5 yrs what's the point of wasting time and storage space ?

claiming to have xxx millions of pics is just a marketing strategy after all, there's no technical reason to do that considering only 20% of the images are maybe selling decently and the remaining 80% could be wiped out and nobody would ever notice.

Hobostocker · « **Reply #16 on:** November 07, 2014, 05:55 »

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on November 07, 2014, 02:46

They don't need to sustain the growth in the collection. If they stopped accepting images today they could probably still keep growing the business for years.

but the competitors would profit from that, they would push buyers into the "freshness" of their archive compared to SS's stale collection.

for what is worth, SS could be even bought by google or microsoft or apple, it's a realistic possibility.

Hobostocker · « **Reply #17 on:** November 07, 2014, 06:00 »

Quote from: leaf on November 07, 2014, 02:35

I think results in the future (for photographers) will be more and more on search placement (if it isn't already) and how good the search algorithm is on the site. How many website are there on the web - yet people are still able to find what they are generally looking for

yes but it;s a lot harder to design a ranking system for images.

images in a stock agencies don't get linked from reputable and less reputable sites, all they can do is making a rank based on views/clicks/zooms/freshness and a few other obvious factors but that's all, so keywording will become THE only way to rank and keyword spamming will flourish even more.

the simplest and most logical fix is for agencies to set a limit in the number of pics they store, or at least giving more visibility to new uploads, one way or another they have to monetize their collection otherwise photographers will quit and while they quit they will also spread the word around and maybe stopping buying there too, same scenario witnessed with istock already and in fact they're struggling to recover.

if they think in the bigger scenario we're worthless they're right but they can't downplay the unexpected consequences of their greedy strategies.

Hobostocker · « **Reply #18 on:** November 07, 2014, 06:33 »

Quote from: sdeva on November 07, 2014, 05:49

The producers of the content also have costs and also live in an inflationary world. An agency when doing well, could remember that contributors are the backbone of this industry and owners of the content. Should we not be a part of the success?

if nothing changes sooner or later people will stop supplying agencies and it will become universally accepted that microstock is unsustainable unless you live in a third world country, it's the same thing we've witnessed with the outsourcing of IT services to india, china, and south east asia.

for someone living in the west these jobs have simply disappeared, it could be the same for micro in one way or another, especially in some niches.

i mean look at australia where now you need 10$ for a burger or a beer and up to 20 bucks for a pack of cigarettes, it's going to be * hard to make a living in OZ off microstock but it's still doable if you live in Bali or Manila or Bangkok.

BaldricksTrousers · « **Reply #19 on:** November 07, 2014, 06:46 »

Quote from: Hobostocker on November 07, 2014, 05:55

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on November 07, 2014, 02:46
They don't need to sustain the growth in the collection. If they stopped accepting images today they could probably still keep growing the business for years.

but the competitors would profit from that, they would push buyers into the "freshness" of their archive compared to SS's stale collection.

for what is worth, SS could be even bought by google or microsoft or apple, it's a realistic possibility.

I'm not proposing it as a policy for them, I'm just saying that the insane rate of growth in the collection isn't necessary, if they added a million or two images a year it would probably keep things fresh enough for the buyers to be happy.

Buyouts happen, look at what happened to Getty Images, but it's much easier to buy an ailing public company than one doing well.

gostwyck · « **Reply #20 on:** November 07, 2014, 06:49 »

Quote from: Hobostocker on November 07, 2014, 02:05

Quote from: zstoimenov on November 07, 2014, 00:48
I can bet that in 2/3 of the times they used the 'New files' filter. It will not get any better, especially for people like me who missed the last six to ten years.

sure but ultimately this factor alone WILL kill the microstock model because they won't be able to keep the promise of selling cheap but selling many times, you'll barely sell only once and for half a dollar, thus making it impossible to sustain the production costs.

i'm the first saying in stock you need a big portfolio but once the leading agency is doubling or tripling the size of its whole archive every year you just can't stay afloat, sooner or later your portfolio will be irrilevant, a drop in the ocean.

A huge number of new images accepted are bizarrely LCV and have little or no chance of ever selling. I don't know why some contributors waste their time uploading vast numbers of similar images when they clearly don't understand 'stock'. Equally I don't understand why SS go to the expense of reviewing and storing so many pointless images. I'm surprised they don't at least impose upload limits based on the sales record of contributors.

I recently undertook some analysis of my own portfolio and was quite surprised by how much my revenue was affected by recent uploads. New images still get found on SS and still sell in worthwhile volume. The only thing that has changed from say 2-3 years ago is that new images do take somewhat longer to be noticed and climb the default sort-order. It used to be days or weeks but now it can take several months.

Every niche subject still has a market of a certain volume. You just need to make sure that you are uploading enough quality images of that market to ensure that you maintain (or grow) your share of it.

The success of SS is a somewhat double-edged sword in my view. The volume of images that they sell has given stability and predictability to my earnings far more than any other agency. However their dominance also gives me cause for concern. Last month (a BME on SS), together with earnings from BigStock, they generated over 65% of my total and my data indicates that their market-share is still growing strongly. At their current rate of growth (and with the continued decline of other agencies) SS could take their market-share to 80% over the next couple of years ... and that would be a significant cause for concern.

gostwyck · « **Reply #21 on:** November 07, 2014, 06:58 »

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on November 07, 2014, 06:46

Quote from: Hobostocker on November 07, 2014, 05:55
Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on November 07, 2014, 02:46
They don't need to sustain the growth in the collection. If they stopped accepting images today they could probably still keep growing the business for years.

but the competitors would profit from that, they would push buyers into the "freshness" of their archive compared to SS's stale collection.

for what is worth, SS could be even bought by google or microsoft or apple, it's a realistic possibility.

I'm not proposing it as a policy for them, I'm just saying that the insane rate of growth in the collection isn't necessary, if they added a million or two images a year it would probably keep things fresh enough for the buyers to be happy.

Buyouts happen, look at what happened to Getty Images, but it's much easier to buy an ailing public company than one doing well.

It's probably just cheaper rather than 'easier' to buy an ailing public company. The current market capitalisation for SSTK is $2.69B. That would be loose change to Google or Apple. Apple is currently sitting on a cash mountain of $165B+.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/07/apple-iphone-6-cash-pile-tax-avoidance-us

BaldricksTrousers · « **Reply #22 on:** November 07, 2014, 07:07 »

Quote from: gostwyck on November 07, 2014, 06:58

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on November 07, 2014, 06:46
Quote from: Hobostocker on November 07, 2014, 05:55
Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on November 07, 2014, 02:46
They don't need to sustain the growth in the collection. If they stopped accepting images today they could probably still keep growing the business for years.

but the competitors would profit from that, they would push buyers into the "freshness" of their archive compared to SS's stale collection.

for what is worth, SS could be even bought by google or microsoft or apple, it's a realistic possibility.

I'm not proposing it as a policy for them, I'm just saying that the insane rate of growth in the collection isn't necessary, if they added a million or two images a year it would probably keep things fresh enough for the buyers to be happy.

Buyouts happen, look at what happened to Getty Images, but it's much easier to buy an ailing public company than one doing well.

It's probably just cheaper rather than 'easier' to buy an ailing public company. The current market capitalisation for SSTK is $2.69B. That would be loose change to Google or Apple. Apple is currently sitting on a cash mountain of $165B+.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/07/apple-iphone-6-cash-pile-tax-avoidance-us

I was thinking in terms of the optimism of existing shareholders. There's a price beyond which it isn't worth paying and if a large section of shareholders aren't willing to set their sights that low then a deal doesn't happen. If you want to get off a sinking ship, however, that is another thing altogether.
If you had SS shares and were offered 10% above last night's close by a potential purchaser, would you grab the cash or wait for something better?
Just now, Qatar's bid for Canary Wharf has been turned down, with the owners saying it is too low. Qatar could easily increase the offer, but will they think it's worth it?

gostwyck · « **Reply #23 on:** November 07, 2014, 07:14 »

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on November 07, 2014, 07:07

Quote from: gostwyck on November 07, 2014, 06:58
Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on November 07, 2014, 06:46
Quote from: Hobostocker on November 07, 2014, 05:55
Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on November 07, 2014, 02:46
They don't need to sustain the growth in the collection. If they stopped accepting images today they could probably still keep growing the business for years.

but the competitors would profit from that, they would push buyers into the "freshness" of their archive compared to SS's stale collection.

for what is worth, SS could be even bought by google or microsoft or apple, it's a realistic possibility.

I'm not proposing it as a policy for them, I'm just saying that the insane rate of growth in the collection isn't necessary, if they added a million or two images a year it would probably keep things fresh enough for the buyers to be happy.

Buyouts happen, look at what happened to Getty Images, but it's much easier to buy an ailing public company than one doing well.

It's probably just cheaper rather than 'easier' to buy an ailing public company. The current market capitalisation for SSTK is $2.69B. That would be loose change to Google or Apple. Apple is currently sitting on a cash mountain of $165B+.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/07/apple-iphone-6-cash-pile-tax-avoidance-us

I was thinking in terms of the optimism of existing shareholders. There's a price beyond which it isn't worth paying and if a large section of shareholders aren't willing to set their sights that low then a deal doesn't happen. If you want to get off a sinking ship, however, that is another thing altogether.
If you had SS shares and were offered 10% above last night's close by a potential purchaser, would you grab the cash or wait for something better?
Just now, Qatar's bid for Canary Wharf has been turned down, with the owners saying it is too low. Qatar could easily increase the offer, but will they think it's worth it?

Agreeing on a price is the easy bit. If you buy an ailing business then you are buying someone else's problems. Remember BMW buying Rover? It became known as 'The English Patient' and was a millstone around their neck until they finally managed to offload it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/679434.stm

Hobostocker · « **Reply #24 on:** November 07, 2014, 07:17 »

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on November 07, 2014, 07:07

There's a price beyond which it isn't worth paying

considering the actual 2.7 billion capitalization and their 44 million images it would cost roughly 60$/image which is laughable as 80% of those pics hardly sell once or twice in their lifetime.

i think it's obvious their goal is a far sell out.
3 billions $ for SS is totally detached from reality, they've already squeezed the lemon to the bone, all they can hope for is gaining even more market share.

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Author Topic: Shutterstock Reports Q3 2014 Results (Read 33072 times)

gostwyck

tickstock

gostwyck

Rinderart

tickstock

Hobostocker

jatrax

zstoimenov

Hobostocker

zstoimenov

leaf

BaldricksTrousers

Lightrecorder

Hobostocker

sdeva

Hobostocker

Hobostocker

Hobostocker

Hobostocker

BaldricksTrousers

gostwyck

gostwyck

BaldricksTrousers

gostwyck

Hobostocker

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